


the jury's still out

by shineyma



Series: and carry me away [7]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, F/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22609318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: The fun Grant's had with the team might come back to bite him.[Yet ANOTHER AU ofcurrent drag me down. I am not stopping.]
Relationships: Jemma Simmons & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Series: and carry me away [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/954021
Comments: 23
Kudos: 87





	the jury's still out

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [current drag me down](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7059394) by [shineyma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma). 



> Ta-da! Week 6 down!!!
> 
> So yesterday was suuuuuuuper stressful for me at work and my girl JD cheered me up with an update to [THE BEST FIC EVER](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17974796/chapters/42456812). Naturally I had to thank her with an installment of one of her favorite of my verses.
> 
> Please note: as a current AU, this fic does contain **reference to the threat of rape**. Doesn't happen. Won't happen. Does get mentioned.
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review! <3

The silence in the quinjet is tense.

Jemma keeps her eyes on her hands and focuses on breathing steadily. There’s no calming her racing heart, not after everything that just happened, but if she concentrates _very hard_ , she should be able to disguise its effects.

Innnnnn. Ouuuuuut. Innnnnn. Ouuuuuut.

It’s fine. She’s fine. There’s no need to panic.

Without her permission, her eyes start to drift towards— _no_. No. She’s looking at her hands. No further.

“Jemma—”

The shock of being addressed—of the silence being broken at all—startles her, and she flinches badly.

It’s a mistake. When she looks up at Skye, she finds the entire team staring at her with heartbreak and horror. Every awful thing they imagine she’s endured in the last year is written all over their faces.

She’s not doing very well at appearing unaffected, is she?

Well, nothing for it but to power through. She clears her throat—her voice will be terribly hoarse if she doesn’t, she fears—and puts on a smile.

“Yes, Skye?”

Her voice is impressively even, she thinks, and she _knows_ her smile is perfect.

Yet the team only looks more distressed.

“What?” she asks.

“It’s, um.” Skye clears her own throat, looking as near tears as Jemma feels. “It’s Daisy now, actually.”

“Oh,” Jemma says. “I see.” She wonders what prompted the change—her mother’s death? That her father is so close and yet so far?—but doesn’t feel it appropriate to ask. Instead, she only nods. “I’m sorr—”

“ _No_ ,” Skye—Daisy—interrupts, loudly enough to take Jemma aback. “No, Jemma, you—don’t apologize. You couldn’t know and—and you can call me whatever you want.”

She’s so earnest. They all have been. Bobbi was careful and kind when she asked if Jemma needed immediate medical attention; Coulson was so sad when he apologized for only having the one quinjet.

It’s obvious they’re under completely the wrong impression.

“Daisy, then,” she says evenly. “Of course I’ll call you by your name.”

She sees at once that it’s entirely the wrong thing to say. Daisy’s earnest expression collapses into furious grief; Bobbi tightens the bandage she’s in the middle of wrapping around Hunter’s knee hard enough to make him grunt.

It’s more evidence for a conclusion she’s already drawn.

Grant has been having fun at SHIELD’s expense. He’s led them—through no end of taunting, she should think—to believe her his victim, rather than his willing bedmate. No doubt, all those times he returned from the field brimming with smug satisfaction, it was because he’d filled their old team’s heads with horrid lies about treating her violently.

It’s exactly the sort of gleefully cruel behavior she expects from him—and to her own regret, she loves that part of him as much as she loves all the others.

She does wish he hadn’t pulled her into it, though—and surely he will, too, soon enough.

“What did you need?” she asks, brightly, to prevent herself from dwelling on the thought.

“Need?” Daisy echoes.

“You said my name,” Jemma reminds her.

“Right.” Daisy looks around, lost. Perhaps she never meant to speak in the first place; she’s obviously forgotten whatever she might have intended to say. “I, uh—”

Her expression darkens as her desperate gaze reaches the last of the jump seats. Unbidden, Jemma’s eyes follow hers. She can’t help a sympathetic wince.

Grant’s head will be killing him when he wakes. Between the six or seven times he was ICER’d, the painful angle his neck rests at, and the ominous _thud_ she heard as he was loaded into the quinjet, which she suspects was the sound of his skull slamming against the bulkhead…

And that’s _before_ the team enacts their vengeance for the harm he’s led them to believe she’s suffered at his hands. She wants to tell them the truth—she’d gladly take on their hate to protect Grant from harm—but what if he’s claimed to have brainwashed her? The last thing she wants is for them to take her denials out on him.

“ _Jemma_.”

She flinches again—even worse than before, she fears—when Coulson takes her hand. _That_ certainly won’t help convince anyone she hasn’t been abused. When she pulls her eyes away from Grant and turns to look at him, the concern creasing his face steals the breath from her lungs.

“You’re safe,” he says. “You don’t have to worry, okay?” He darts an ominous look over her shoulder, but his expression is all reassurance when he takes her other hand. “Ward won’t ever hurt anyone ever again.”

Yes. That’s rather what she’s afraid of.

+++

It’s odd, how strange the Playground feels. It was her home for nearly a year, but now…now, it feels foreign. Like she’s never laid eyes on the bare brick and concrete walls, never wandered the cold corridors in the middle of the night.

She finds herself pressing a wistful hand to the wall outside the infirmary. One awful night, when Fitz was still in his coma, she counted every single speck in every single brick in this wall after the doctors kicked her out of his room. They meant for her to get some sleep; instead, she walked out of sight and then crawled right back, under the view of the windows, to wait out the six hours they’d ordered next to the door.

It was one of the worst nights of her life.

She doesn’t remember how many specks there were. That’s unlike her.

But then, she has greater concerns at the moment.

“Simmons?” Bobbi prompts, still so gentle.

She pulls her hand away. “Yes, sorry. I’m coming.”

“Take your time,” Bobbi says—but her expression says she thinks Jemma is stalling because she’s afraid.

Which, to be fair, she is a bit. She knows what the “totally routine” physical Bobbi’s insisted on is really about: looking for signs of abuse. And though Jemma hasn’t been abused…well, Grant’s been in something of a mood these last few weeks, and the sex has been increasingly rough.

Nothing Jemma didn’t thoroughly enjoy, of course—say what one will about Grant, he’s always very generous in the bedroom (and a number of other places)—but she has quite the collection of interesting bruises.

Bobbi is _not_ going to be happy.

Fortunately, a surprise waits in the lab to shock Jemma out of her progressively more dismal thoughts.

“Oh!” she says. “Lincoln! Hello!”

“Hey, Agent Simmons.” Lincoln smiles genuinely at her—quite a change from the suspicion and distaste with which he regarded her the last time they met. “Good to see you.”

He must be a very good doctor, she thinks—his tone is perfectly, ambiguously warm. If she so wished, she could attach any number of endings to his sentence: Good to see you here, to see you alive, to see you relatively unbroken.

“And you,” she says. “Have you joined SHIELD?”

His smile turns a bit wry. “Mostly by default, but yeah. Do you need—?”

“I’ve got this,” Bobbi interrupts. “Thanks.”

That effectively kills Lincoln’s smile. Likely he’s drawing his own conclusions as to why Bobbi, a biologist with field med training, would be giving a newly rescued prisoner a physical rather than entrusting it to the actual doctor—who happens to be male—in the room.

“Right,” he says seriously. “I’ll leave you to it. Welcome home, Agent Simmons.”

Thanking him feels like lying, but she’s become much better at that.

+++

As predicted, the physical goes badly. Bobbi visibly struggles to keep smiling through it, and by the end, she’s developed an odd twitch in her left eye. It likely doesn’t help that being confronted by Bobbi’s friendliness after a year of sleeping with a man who tortured and nearly killed her has Jemma feeling quite miserably guilty, but it’s really the bruises that do it, she thinks.

Either way, Bobbi excuses herself as soon as Daisy arrives to escort Jemma to dinner. She promises she’ll be along in a few moments, but she never actually shows.

It’s just as well—it’s not a very pleasant dinner. Oh, the team _tries_ , bless them, but things are simply too awkward. Between the time she’s been away, the way they believe she’s suffered, and the fact she never quite bonded with Hunter and Mack the way she did Bobbi…

And then, of course, there’s the elephant in the room, which Jemma feels compelled to address only a few minutes in.

“Um,” she says, and nearly falters at the way everyone’s eyes snap to her. “Where’s Fitz?”

His absence on the mission wasn’t a surprise; despite his insistence on visiting the _Iliad_ , he’s hardly a field agent. That he wasn’t waiting in the hangar _was_ a surprise, and that he’s still failed to materialize when she’s been on base for a good two hours is downright shocking.

She’s not entirely sure she’s ready to see him—he knows her so well; surely he’ll read her guilt all over her face and the team will understand and begin to hate her—but she’s starting to worry about his extended absence.

The awkward looks her question evokes are not encouraging.

“Fitz,” Coulson starts, and then stops. “Uh. You know he’d love to be here, but…”

The look he gives May so clearly communicates _save me_ that even despite her worry, Jemma has to smile.

May rolls her eyes, but her blunt, “We had to sedate him,” is spoken remarkably gently, for her.

“She says _we_ ,” Mack grumbles.

“ _Mack_ sedated him,” Daisy corrects. There’s a teasing edge to the words, a reference to some inside joke Jemma doesn’t know—but it’s only a moment before her smile fades. “But yeah, he was a little…”

“He was concerned,” Coulson picks back up, carefully, “when he heard we had eyes on you. And I didn’t want to risk him doing something reckless, so…” He makes a little gesture Jemma thinks is meant to indicate someone getting knocked on the head. “I’m sorry to delay your reunion.”

He’s so sincere. They’re all so _worried_ about her.

Jemma can’t push her plate away, not with all eyes at the table on her, but she is most definitely done eating.

“That’s all right,” she says. “I understand. Fitz doesn’t always think logically when it comes to—” _to me_ , she almost says. “—to his friends.” She hides her hands beneath the table and tries not to look like she’s dreading seeing her best friend again. “I can wait.”

“You’re gonna have to wait a while,” Lincoln warns. “Mack went a little overboard—”

“You know, I was kind of in a hurry,” Mack says defensively.

“—which is why we really should leave that kind of thing to the actual doctor on the team,” Lincoln goes on like he can’t hear him. He has the same teasing edge as Daisy, the suggestion that this is a running joke.

As, she suspects, is Coulson’s answering, “Oh, you’re _definitely_ new here.”

It would almost make Jemma smile, were it not for the longing it fills her with. And, worse, the guilty jerk that follows—as though Coulson’s just remembered that Jemma, who was the first on the team (back in those innocent days on the Bus) to complain about the lack of a real medical doctor, is present.

“How long?” she asks, hoping to forestall a completely unnecessary apology. It’s her own fault she’s been gone so long; the team have no call to feel guilty for it.

“Probably not until breakfast,” Lincoln says regretfully.

It’s almost eight now, so that gives her twelve hours at the very most. Twelve hours until Fitz is awake to greet her, to read her face, and to reveal to the team that she’s entirely unworthy of their concern.

Jemma nods quietly, pushes her food around her plate, and thinks.

+++

Daisy offers to stay with Jemma if it will help her sleep. There’s a hopeful sort of undertone to the question that makes Jemma think the offer is as much for Daisy’s own benefit as hers.

She wishes she could say yes—guilt and selfishness aside, she’s _missed_ Daisy, missed their occasional sleepovers and the comfort of cuddling close to someone with the assurance she won’t be pushed away—but she can’t. Daisy accepts her refusal with good grace, but makes her promise twice that she’ll be fine and thrice that she’ll call if she needs absolutely _anything_ , even just a hug, no matter what time it is.

And after that, she asks—so hesitantly it puts a lump in Jemma’s throat—whether she might like a hug right now.

“Yes, please,” Jemma says.

She closes her eyes as they cling to one another, thinking about Morocco and the Hub and the day Daisy saw her father off to be TAHITI’d—about all the other hugs they’ve ever had, on bad days and good. She remembers what Daisy did for her, so unthinking, just a few hours ago.

“I love you,” she murmurs into Daisy’s shoulder, and feels her breath hitch.

“I love you, too,” Daisy says. There are tears in her voice. “I’m so, so glad you’re home, Jemma.”

Jemma holds her closer and doesn’t answer.

+++

Jemma’s room is just as she left it. Her clothes, her books—even her tablet, discarded in the middle of her half-made bed. She places it with deliberate care on the nightstand before she strips and remakes the bed with clean sheets.

It was Coulson who thought of that detail, of course—who mentioned after dinner that her room had been left untouched and that it meant her sheets hadn’t been washed in a year. He actually offered to remake her bed for her, which is such a _Coulson_ thing to do that Jemma actually laughed.

She prefers not to remember the look her laughter put on his face, for fear of giving in to the sobs that have threatened for hours.

The Playground may not feel like home—and it still doesn’t, not even in her own room, wearing her own clothes—but it does _smell_ like it. Somehow, laying her head on her pillow and inhaling the familiar scent of the SHIELD-grade detergent they found stored in absurd quantities near the laundry facilities makes her relax as nothing else has.

She falls right into sleep…and dreams of her rescue.

+++

_SHIELD’s presence is announced simultaneously, by an explosion and a shout over the radio. Aldridge swears and races out of the room, drawing her sidearm as she goes; Hicks pauses only long enough to point at a random guard and snap, “You’re in charge,” before he follows._

_Jemma’s heart was in her throat from the explosion. When she realizes Hicks has placed_ Levens _in charge, it falls right to her feet._

_“Well,” Levens drawls, smiling slowly. “You hear that, boys? I’m in charge.”_

_There’s an ICER in a drawer in Jemma’s lab bench, waiting for the day Levens makes his move. Unfortunately, they’re nowhere near Jemma’s lab, let alone that drawer—they’re in the field, investigating a lab she suspects now is a SHIELD trap._

_She’s defenseless. The lab is under attack, sure to keep Grant distracted for a good long while. And there’s not a soul in this room who would care to intervene if Levens chooses to hurt her._

_It’s been coming for a while now. She’s seen it coming—in his lingering eyes, in the occasional touch. Just last week, she added a real gun to her drawer, just in case._

_Looking at him now, she knows he means to take this opening._

_She doesn’t bother inventing an excuse to leave the room. She just runs._

_Levens is laughing as he gives chase._

_He’s still laughing when a blast of power comes out of nowhere and sends him flying into a wall. Jemma stumbles and skids to a stop, whirling around to gape back at him—or what’s_ left _of him. There’s no way he survived that, not with the size of the dent he put in the concrete wall. The limp figure on the ground isn’t Levens, it’s his_ corpse.

_Giddy with relief and now-unnecessary adrenaline, she actually giggles._

_Then she registers the gaping woman standing a ways down the intersecting corridor—the source of that blast of power. A woman so shocked, she’s still standing with her arm extended, palm aimed threateningly at an empty stretch of dented wall._

_“_ Skye? _”_

_“Jemma!”_

_She has no memory of how the distance between them closed. One moment they were gawping at one another; the next they were hugging and crying._

_“Thank you,” Jemma sobs. “Oh, god, Skye—_ thank _you.”_

 _All these months she’s spent fearing Levens, so horribly aware that none of his own colleagues would ever think to protect her from him and that Grant wouldn’t care to. Of_ course _it’s one of the team that protected her instead._

_Skye is sobbing just as hard as she is. It makes feel like the worst sort of person._

_“Oh god,” she’s saying, “oh god, you’re here—guys, I’ve got her, I found her—”_

_If Grant were here, Jemma would face a dilemma. She’s chosen him over the team so many times, but that was always without the team present. What would she do, with Grant on one side and Skye on the other?_

_She doesn’t know and it doesn’t matter. Grant_ isn’t _here; the only other side than Skye’s is Levens and the guards who would have allowed him to hurt her._

_Jemma lets Skye lead her away without a second thought._

+++

The alarm on her tablet wakes her before she can dream of the moment the second thoughts came—which was, of course, the exact same moment she realized Grant had been captured, too.

But this is no time for dwelling on all that.

Her tablet connects to the Playground’s secure network just as easily as it always did, and all of her access codes still work. It’s child’s play to slip into the security system.

There was a time, after Fitz woke from his coma but before they could judge how badly he’d be affected by the brain damage, when Jemma would spend hours at night wandering the corridors. The first time, she did so unopposed; the second time, Coulson pulled her aside the next morning and gently scolded her for it. She was noted on the security footage and he was concerned.

To comfort him, she learned to loop the footage. Not on any permanent basis, of course, just long enough so she could pass through each corridor unnoticed, turning herself into a ghost in the system. It felt appropriate.

She puts it now to much less acceptable use and, secure in her invisibility, heads to Vault D.

+++

Grant sits up when she opens the door. He doesn’t look at all surprised to see her. He does, to her relief, look unharmed.

“Conjugal visit?” he asks. He gives her a slow once-over, mouth ticking into a smile as his eyes linger on the bruises her camisole leaves visible. “I didn’t think Coulson had it in him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. She hugs her tablet to her chest as she descends the stairs. “I don’t know what you’ve been telling the team—although I can certainly guess—but Coulson would sooner shoot you than allow you to breathe the same air as me. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“He does,” he corrects, a bit condescendingly. “If you think half the team’s not glued to the security—”

“I looped the cameras.” She tries to sound condescending in return, but thinks she only manages fond. She worried what she’d find, in light of both how his last visit went and the terrible things the team thinks of him; it’s a relief to see him well. “There’s nothing for them to see.”

Grant stands slowly. “Really.”

“There’s a weakness in the barrier,” she tells him, and moves to the left-hand wall in order to point it out. “If you press just here while the barrier is activated by someone coming too near on the outside, you can disrupt the primary laser. The system will fail.”

“Here?” he checks, poking the spot she indicated.

“There,” she confirms.

He pokes the appropriate place again, appearing a bit bemused. “You figured this out in eight hours?”

Jemma hesitates for a second, but…well. It’s not as though he doesn’t _know_ she’s been hopelessly in love with him for years.

“Three days,” she says, and answers his raised eyebrows with a shrug. “I planned it all out when you were here the first time. I almost freed you a dozen times.”

“Would’ve been nice,” he says. “What stopped you?”

“Fitz,” she says honestly. Grant’s scowl surprises her. “He was suffering so badly from what you’d done to him. After all that…if I’d betrayed him, he never would’ve survived it.”

“Figures,” he mutters, crossing his arms. “And what about this time? When you let me out and run away with me right after being _rescued_ from me? He gonna survive that?”

“He doesn’t have to,” she says, and steps back. “I’m not letting you out and I’m not running away with you.”

Grant’s arms fall to his sides.

“If I know Coulson, he’ll be down before breakfast to tell you that you won’t escape again. And if I know _you_ , you’ll have no trouble provoking him into coming near enough to activate the barrier.” She takes another step back. “You can wait a few more hours, I’m sure.”

“And you’re just gonna stay here?” he asks, tone unreadable. “Join the team again?”

“Yes.” She’s likely clutching her poor tablet tightly enough to crack it, but she manages to sound quite collected. “Yes. I’m staying.”

She tormented herself with it for hours, thoughts turning circles while she endured dinner and a painfully awkward movie, while she showered, while she hugged Daisy and tried not to cry.

The truth is, it was so much easier to stay with Grant when he’d captured her. Actually walking away from the team—especially after tonight, after seeing how they’ve hurt over her absence, how they love her and rejoice in her return…

She simply can’t.

“I love you,” she says, “you know that. I suspect I always will. But Hydra was never where I belonged.”

“No,” Grant agrees slowly. “So why let me out, then? Wanna get one last betrayal in before you turn SHIELD again?”

Jemma ignores the barb. “Because I love you. I could never just leave you in here to rot—or to suffer the torture the team no doubt has planned after you spent a year telling them you were _raping and abusing me_.”

In turn, Grant ignores her pointed commented. “You think I can’t get out of here without an insider tip?”

He sounds amused. Despite herself, it makes Jemma smile. She’ll miss his smug superiority.

“No,” she says. “I know you better than that. After all that time you spent trapped in here, I’m sure you planned extensively for the event you found yourself in Vault D again. I’m sure that if you don’t escape in the next—what? Day? Two days?—Markham will lead an army straight through the Playground to get you out. Likely with Warrington on hand to pepper the base with explosives, that you might destroy SHIELD once and for all once you’ve gone.”

Head dropping forward, Grant laughs under his breath. “You really do know me.”

“I do,” she says. “And I also know the team, and know that you’ve pushed them beyond their limits with your taunting.” She brushes a touch along the base of her neck, just under the finger-shaped bruises her camisole doesn’t come even close to hiding. “These certainly didn’t help.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining,” he says, quite smugly.

“No,” she agrees, “I wasn’t. But they look terrible and only serve to reinforce every lie you’ve ever told them.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s too much, Grant. Coulson won’t let you escape, not this time. It doesn’t matter how many casualties your people inflict, how many hostages they take—the team will _kill you_ before Markham makes it past the first layer of security.”

“Huh.” Grant wanders away, back to his sad little cot, and sits down. “And having told me that, you don’t worry I’m gonna deal with that threat while I have the chance? If I’m taunting Coulson into getting close…he’ll be right there when the barrier falls. I could snap his neck before I go.”

“No,” she says, “I don’t worry. You’re smarter than that. You know that even a fraction of a second wasted could be the difference between escape and recapture—and like you said, the team is glued to the security footage. They’ll see the barrier fall. You won’t have long to move.”

He laughs, longer and louder this time. “You’ve just got everything figured out, don’t you, Jem?”

“I am a genius, after all,” she says—lightly, to disguise how her heart thrills at the nickname. Staying is the right choice—she _knows_ it’s the right choice—but oh, she’ll miss him. She loves him so dearly, and after a year of regular contact…

The next few months, she thinks, will be miserable.

“Yeah,” Grant says, leaning back on his hands. “There’s just one thing.”

She straightens, mind racing, tracing the plan and its variables backwards and forwards. “Really? What? What have I left out?”

“You’re planning on staying,” he says. “What makes you think I’m gonna let you?”

Jemma’s traitorous heart leaps in her chest. Sternly, she orders it to be sensible.

“You don’t love me,” she says.

“That doesn’t make you any less mine,” he says, voice low—low enough that, with her pulse pounding in her ears, she can’t quite tell whether the words are seductive or menacing. “And you know I keep what’s mine.”

Is she still dreaming? Jemma pinches herself discreetly.

“You’re not staying,” he concludes—firmly, but casually. As though his speaking makes it so.

Oh, he just has to make this harder, doesn’t he? She should’ve expected it, really. He’s always such an ass.

She wants to go with him. Of course she does. She _loves_ him and she’ll miss him awfully.

But she loves the team. She’s missed the team awfully.

What she actually, really wants, of course, is to have both. To be able to be with Grant and remain friends with the team. She doesn’t even bother to dream of it, though. It’s just not possible. The team will never forgive Grant, any more than he’ll ever forgive them.

She has to choose one or the other. She _has_ to.

And it’s only sensible to choose the ones who love her back.

“I am,” she says tremulously. “I’m sorry. You can’t change my mind.”

That makes Grant smile. “Can’t I?”

He can. Of course he can. If she gives him the chance, he can not only change her mind about staying but also likely convince her to drop the barrier right now and have sex with him on that cot.

Jemma reminds herself of Daisy’s tearful hug, of Fitz sedated for the sake of his own safety—of Bobbi’s gentle physical and Coulson’s clean sheets. Of May sitting between her and the rest of the team during the movie, a silent barrier just in time to keep her from getting overwhelmed.

SHIELD is where she belongs. She _can’t_ leave again.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Goodbye.”

So saying, she flees the Vault. Grant’s gaze is like a brand on her skin all the way up the stairs.

And his parting “I’ll see you in the morning” follows her all the way back to bed.


End file.
